DAT not working

[Rick Stevens]

Jason Pinkney wrote:
> 
> Dear redhat-install,
> 
> my DAT tape drive used to work with my RHL system
> but yesterday, I tried to read a tape and it got
> messed up.  At first, it seemed fine.  It started
> reading the tape in response to my command:
> % tar tf /dev/st0 > listing
> but it wouldn't finish and give me a prompt.  Inspection
> of "listing" showed that it only made it a little ways
> into the tar file (incomplete listing).
> Since then, it has been impossible to communicate with.
> Even after rebooting, the basic command
> % mt -f /dev/st0 status
> will either give no response and become a sleeping process
> that can't be killed, or it will say:
> /dev/st0: No such device or address
> 
> Can you tell where the problem is?
> 
>     Here is some output from dmesg:
> % dmesg | grep scsi
> kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
> scsi0 : Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.8
> Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 6, lun 0
> scsi1 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
> Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
> sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/40x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
> (scsi0:A:6): 80.000MB/s transfers (40.000MHz, offset 32, 16bit)
> scsi0:0:6:0: Attempting to queue an ABORT message
> scsi0: Dumping Card State while idle, at SEQADDR 0x8
> (scsi0:A:6:0): Queuing a recovery SCB
> scsi0:0:6:0: Device is disconnected, re-queuing SCB
> (scsi0:A:6:0): Abort Message Sent
> (scsi0:A:6:0): SCB 3 - Abort Completed.
> scsi0:0:6:0: Attempting to queue an ABORT message
> scsi0: Dumping Card State while idle, at SEQADDR 0x8
> (scsi0:A:6:0): Queuing a recovery SCB
> scsi0:0:6:0: Device is disconnected, re-queuing SCB
> (scsi0:A:6:0): Abort Message Sent
> (scsi0:A:6:0): SCB 3 - Abort Completed.
> scsi0:0:6:0: Attempting to queue a TARGET RESET message
> scsi0:0:6:0: Command not found
> scsi0:0:6:0: Attempting to queue an ABORT message
> scsi0: Dumping Card State while idle, at SEQADDR 0x9
> (scsi0:A:6:0): Queuing a recovery SCB
> scsi0:0:6:0: Device is disconnected, re-queuing SCB
> (scsi0:A:6:0): Abort Message Sent
> (scsi0:A:6:0): SCB 3 - Abort Completed.
> scsi0:0:6:0: Attempting to queue an ABORT message
> scsi0: Dumping Card State while idle, at SEQADDR 0x9
> (scsi0:A:6:0): Queuing a recovery SCB
> scsi0:0:6:0: Device is disconnected, re-queuing SCB
> (scsi0:A:6:0): Abort Message Sent
> (scsi0:A:6:0): SCB 3 - Abort Completed.
> scsi: device set offline - not ready or command retry failed after bus 
> reset: host 0 channel 0 id 6 lun 0
> scsi0:0:6:0: Attempting to queue an ABORT message
> scsi0: Dumping Card State while idle, at SEQADDR 0x9
> (scsi0:A:6:0): Queuing a recovery SCB
> scsi0:0:6:0: Device is disconnected, re-queuing SCB
> (scsi0:A:6:0): Abort Message Sent
> (scsi0:A:6:0): SCB 2 - Abort Completed.
> 
> I think most of these errors were generated while I was pushing the
> eject button and sending "mt -f /dev/st0 status" commands.

Did you change anything?  Did you upgrade to FC1 or something along
those lines?

The errors you show are SCSI errors.  The most common causes are bad
SCSI bus termination or SCSI controller problem.

If the SCSI card is a PCI card, try shutting down, opening the box and
reseating the card (unscrew it, unplug it, plug it back in and screw
it down again).  You'd be amazed at how many problems that solves.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-                    I doubt, therefore I might be.                  -
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